Hell under Glass
by Murder Junkie
Summary: The story of what happens when Vita-Chambers malfunction... Based off of Peculiar Objects of Interest, chapter 10. Warning! Contains hints of slash, science gone wrong, and Jack not killing splicers!


**Jacob**

Warning! This story will contain stuff many people may not approve of. If you're easily offended, or just like writing flames, kindly fuck off now. There will be blood, inappropriate touching, awkward social interactions, descriptions of bodily functions, and a splicer going through withdrawal. There may even be humor, on occasion. If you are mature enough to enjoy Bioshock, however, you should be just fine.

Disclaimer- Bioshock and it's characters belongs to 2K Games. "Peculiar Objects of Interest" and _it's_ characters belong to DoomsDayDev. I am making no money from the writing of this, and anyone who thinks I am is delusional.

This story is dedicated to DoomsDayDev, without whom I would not have gotten off my sorry butt and written it, and to whom I owe many, many apologies for the terrible delay. To fully understand what the hell is going on, please go read his story. I strongly doubt you will regret it.

Now, on with the show..!

**Prologue**

Vita-Chambers, glass and metal tubes of electric blue heaven, are bullet proof. Fire proof. Shock proof, ice proof, _bee_ proof. They are self powered, self maintaining, and possibly self aware. They can take even the smallest sample of genetic material and turn it into a fully formed, fully _clothed_ human being, provided the original source dies within it's range. This is their only purpose.

From Fontaine Futuristics to Hephaestus, they are as common as Bathyspheres in an aquatic dystopia, and depending on who you are, far more useful.

However...

They. Are. Not. Water. Proof.

**When Vita-Chamber Malfunction**

Jack watched in horror as the copies waged a mental war, fighting with glares and rhetoric and strong language, trying to prove to the group they were "the real Jack! You're all just clones of ME!" Never mind Jack had died scant moments after first stepping out of the sea and into Rapture, that his body was rotting in some flooded chamber, food for the fishes. That every Jack since was a clone of a dead man, no matter who won or lost this fight.

The fact that a new copy appeared and joined the argument every moment, their numbers quickly reaching the obscene, did not stop the shouting. Nor did the arrival of a bemused splicer, armed to the teeth with the forgotten weaponry of a Jack long dead.

Bob, for this was the name the splicer had chosen to go by lately, approached Jack silently from behind, unaware of what kept the man's attention so much as to be oblivious of his own oncoming death. Beyond the shadowed hallway the splicer stalked, Jack fought Jack fought Jack, lit by the glow of Fisherman's Wharf's glass ceiling and an over-worked Vita-Chamber. The only calm one, the first to emerge from the tube before this mess began, sat on a nearby bench, eyes wide and body shaking and seemingly in a state of shock or oncoming hysteria.

Bob slammed the butt of a well loved pistol into the side of the man's head.

"Shit!" Jack yelped, stumbling to his feet and whirling on his attacker, hand covering the new injury as the splicer laughed hysterically, "Wait..." panic was quickly replaced by surprise and not a little confusion, "...You again." which were replaced by unamused exasperation.

The two had met before, near Arcadia Heights. Bob, being an ADAM addicted "Leadhead" splicer, had blown out Jack's brains in a surprise attack, then proceeded to raid his corpse. Several gruesome confrontations later proved Bob to still be human enough to use Vita-Chambers, much to the vexation of Jack. As both were equally well armed, Jack often found himself dreading each subsequent fight.

Now here he was again, making a bad situation worse with his gloating and screeching laughter.

"I-" Jack dodged a sudden lunge by the splicer, cursed his luck and Rapture and all forms of mutant slug, and shoved Bob away, "I have bigger problems than _you_ right now!"

"Oh?" Bob scoffed, sarcastic and arrogant and as oblivious as ever, invading Jack's personal space just to spite him, "And what might _that_ be?"

Jack grabbed Bob's shoulder and spun him to face the hoard, pointing with a shaking finger, "_Them._" he uttered as the mirth drained from the others face.

Several dozen Jacks bickered and harassed one another, ignorant and loud _and_ _still multiplying_.

"What the hell _is_ this?!" Bob cried in confusion, pulling away to stare at the Jack beside him.

The man shook his head in near misery, his sense of self terribly rattled, "It's that _machine,_" Jack gestured at malfunctioning tube as it spit out another copy, only to begin creating another, "It's been cloning us, them,_ me, _non-stop!"

Bob raised an eyebrow. "Have you tried _killing_ them?"

"It's kinda hard to kill someone who looks identical to yourself..." Jack replied indignantly, the idea not having occurred to him.

Bob rolled his eyes and took aim, "Fine, I'll do it for you." Jack 5 (it was easier to argue if everyone was numbered) dropped with a wet squelch, mud filling the smoking hole through his head.

There was silence as the shot echoed in the in the crowded room, identical men gaping at the killer, petty arguments forgotten. It was short lived, stunned silence overtaken by shocked words in hushed voices.

H-He..." A quiet utterance, followed by outrage, "He just shot that guy!" followed by the wielding of wrenches, "Kill him!!"

The splicer was overwhelmed, bum-rushed and beaten to death too quickly to really satisfy.

The Vita-Chamber hummed along merrily in the background and produced the recently deceased "5" sans mud filled hole. His return drew the others away from the broken body, questions flung at the slightly stunned man and arguments resuming.

Jack returned to his bench to think.

However Bob soon walked out of the Vita-Chamber as well, pushing through the confused (and still a little angry) group, "Don't mind me, just passing through..." and sat heavily next to Jack, grimacing unpleasantly at discovering a problem bloodshed could not solve. "Well, Jack," he huffed, "It seems _that_ _doesn't work_." he paused to dig a mangled pack of Nico Time cigarettes out of his breast pocket, clench one between his teeth, and light it, "Let's find some other plan."

Jack shoved his hands through his hair angrily, frustrated at the failure of a simple cure for this headache, "Alright. I gues-" a subtle but familiar flash of light killed the words on his tongue, horror chocking his throat closed.

Bob emerged from the Vita-Chamber again, looking surprised to see himself sitting in shock next to a rapidly paling Jack. Several other Jacks glared at the newest clone, bloody wrenches weighing heavily from an unsatisfying kill.

Jack moaned with his head in his hands, unwilling to watch the madness and unaware of the rising tension, "Oh goddammit, now it's copying _you!_" he could hear the mocking hum of cloning, the sound drilling into his very brain.

"I think we should leave." Bob was slowly rising from the bench, his low, cautious tone snapping Jack from his stupor. The splicer was as loud and explosive to a fireball to the face. To see him warily backing away, eyes locked forward and unblinking, was so out of character as to be disturbing.

"Why..?" the unsettled Jack asked, turning in his seat to watch the Leadhead cautiously, but otherwise staying put.

A brief flicker of annoyance (and a little pity) was directed at Jack, but the splicer kept moving, "This is about to get very _ugly_, very _soon_." he replied quietly.

Jack's head snapped back around as a loud _crack _of wrench meeting skull sounded from across the room, abruptly made aware of the heated conflict between Jacks and a growing number of Bobs.

Chaos erupted just as suddenly, first blood spilt and tension bursting into fire and lead, bees and grenades.

Giving up all hopes of a stealthy escape, the first Bob grabbed the first Jack by his collar and bodily dragged him from the room, the man's near comatose state of shock rendering him dead weight wrapped in damp wool. Really, how the man had managed to get even this far was becoming something of a nagging mystery to the splicer.

They waited outside the room as the noise rose and fell, gunshots and screams of plasmid fuelled rage eventually fading to Rapture's lonely dripping silence. Bob lit a new cigarette, calmly leaning against a damp wall, and watched Jack slowly regain his wits.

Seeing awareness enter the brown eyes at last, Bob crushed the smoke (and his secret relief at said awareness) under his patent leather heel, straightened up, and the two of them re-entered the room.

It was red. Exterior lights shone through stained glass walls and cast the mire and muck of Fisherman's Wharf in hellish shades, but that the glass was stained with _blood_ and _so much of it_ made it all the worse. Buckshot scored the walls, glass or otherwise, sometimes naked but more often clothed in shredded human flesh. A body smouldered quietly in a corner, blackened skin hissing suddenly as cold blood dripped from a slowly thawing torso suspended high in the rafters. A single forgotten proximity mine flickered away forlornly, half sunken in mud and gore.

The air was rank with the stench of rotting fish and steaming entrails, thick and cloying as if from a freshly gutted whale.

Here, nothing had survived. Every last clone had been butchered, their remains lit by the frantic pulsing of a malfunctioning Vita-Chamber. Blue lightning crawled across the inside of the glass, white sparks flickering madly at it's core, blood splashed over it's surface an inappropriate hot pink and it would be funny _any other day_.

Jack and Bob stood in the doorway, shocked silent by the carnage wrought by their copies. It was a brief silence however, as the overwhelmed Vita-Chamber undertook and _faltered_ with the command of it's programming to revive _all_ who died within it's range. It shook on it's foundations, steam clouding the glass and frantic warning bells rang loud as the command to _revive_ encountered the malfunctioning processor that said when it should _stop_. The sound of screeching gears and rupturing pistons heralded it's completion.

Jack covered his mouth and fought down lunch. Bob slowly shook his head back and forth, eyes wide in horror. What emerged could not be ignore, cold not be _denied_ by either.

It stumbled forth on unsteady legs, bracing itself against the dripping sides of the chamber with shaking hands. It wheezed with it's each breath, too many lungs cramped together in a distorted chest.

Too many lungs... Too many arms, legs, _faces_, the thing was flesh and bone and _nightmare_ born of science gone _wrong_ and it was_ looking at them_ as though to say "Kill us! Put us out of our misery!" because it was undeniable that this horror was _Jack_ and _Bob_ in _one terrible body _and _nothing_ should suffer as _it_ did!

Jack and Bob raised their grenade launchers, unspoken agreement that nothing should remain, and unloaded round after round until _that thing _was_ gone_.

They stared at the splatter of flesh before them until it dawned that _this would happen again_ so long as that forsaken chamber remained. Jack turned to Bob with a grim set to his jaw, "Look. I don't know, don't _want_ to know, what that thing was." he gestured at the tube, "We need to solve this... _problem_ now." Bob looked at Jack as the man sighed tiredly, "Any thoughts?"

Both turned back to the Vita-Chamber, it's once heavenly facade rusted and stained red, a mockery of man's dream of eternal life.

Bob slowly grinned, a shade of madness in his eye, "...The ocean..."

"What?"

The splicer laughed wildly, grabbing Jack in his excitement, "We can push it into the ocean!"

Jack pulled his arm away, frowning slightly over having been shaken by the other man, "Alright..." he glared at the chamber, "...don't have any _better_ ideas..."

The two managed to break the machine free, banging and cursing at it's base with wrench and plasmid. Dragging it to an airlock became a frantic hobble as it started humming, ignoring all logic that said it _should not work_ without power.

As the room around it flooded, from within the chamber stared wide, mismatched eyes. The lock decompressed, the door opened, and the Vita-Chamber was dragged out into the cold, unforgiving ocean.

Rapture went on quietly drowning, Jack and Bob went back to being saviour and splicer, and Hell's Vita-Chamber dragged it's damned cargo into the abyss.

End Prologue: When Vita-Chambers Malfunction

Questions, comments, complaints and confused mutterings can be directed at the "review" button below! And thank you to anyone who made it this far. I love you.


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